Pirates, keep them or ban them, what would you do?

[Dwood]

With stat tracking, just have it ignore invalid hashes.

Define invalid hash, please

[chrisk123999]

Hash's that are generated from the keygen that everyone in 1.00 uses.

[Patrickssj6]

Just make it so that if more that 5 people use the same hash, blacklist it.

My IP gets changed every day. What you could do is ban IP ranges but not recommended.

[p0lar_bear]

Just make it so that if more that 5 people use the same hash, blacklist it.

My IP gets changed every day. What you could do is ban IP ranges but not recommended.

How do we determine how many people are using a hash? Aliases are unreliable since they can be changed at will, and IP addresses also change.

[Kornman00]

You can check if there are multiple instances of the same cd hash in a single server, or if a cd hash is reported in more than one game in a time range (not sure if aero's stat app keeps track of how long the player was in the game when the stats are reported though)

[Cortexian]

Make it so the app doesn't automatically track everyone. Make it so it only tracks people who enter the server and type "!register" or something. Then when they do !register the app can check the gamespy server to see if its valid or not, if it is then it allows registration, if not it returns a message saying that pirates are gay and they should go buy the game for multiplayer.

[Sean Aero]

You can check if there are multiple instances of the same cd hash in a single server, or if a cd hash is reported in more than one game in a time range (not sure if aero's stat app keeps track of how long the player was in the game when the stats are reported though)

I was thinking of this as well, the current system would blacklist a hash within 20 seconds of the same hash occurring. It would be a continues check, which would become more effective when more servers are running the app.
Just to clear things a bit up I'm more of a project leader than an app developer, but until release I won't go into detail on this.

Make it so the app doesn't automatically track everyone. Make it so it only tracks people who enter the server and type "!register" or something. Then when they do !register the app can check the gamespy server to see if its valid or not, if it is then it allows registration, if not it returns a message saying that pirates are gay and they should go buy the game for multiplayer.

The main idea behind the system is to make things automated as much as possible while the user required actions are nearly zero other than signing up and start playing.
The reason I want to avoid this method where people actually have to type words to track their stats is that the majority of gamers are simply too lazy or just don't understand how things work.
Also I want to avoid having half formed post game carnage or statistics overall. Just because I'm tracking a pirate doesn't mean I'll actually show the pirate how he/she performed or at least not with easy navigation compared to a legit key. The true beauty of the system is when your account is linked to your hash, that's when the more fun and interesting stats are demonstrated. So being a pirate really doesn't help.

[chrisk123999]

Or just track it anyway, and just block it from showing up on whatever site your going to use to show that stats.

[=sw=warlord]

There wouldn't be much point using the tracker if you're a pirate anyhow.
From what I understand it makes a profile for the hash so if multiple people are using that same key then the stats won't be reliable and so tracking your stats as a pirate would be useless as any old person could just wreck the stats for the key you use.

[Cortexian]

Some pirates use spoofed and completely fake hashes on "cracked" servers though.